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G'day!

G'Day

Welcome to my blog.

In 2008, I received a trial flight in a light aircraft - a flight which changed my life. After a mere thirty minutes in an asthmatic old Cessna, I decided I would become a pilot. It was love at first flight. As Leonardo Da Vinci famously said - Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

However, like any relationship, there were highs (and there were puns!) and there were many moments where I thought I would never grasp this new skill.

After fifteen instructors, six flying schools and enough tears to fill a dam, I became a private pilot. And, because of a strong masochistic streak, I decided to study for my Commercial Pilot's Licence.

This blog is a working narrative of my time as a pilot, through my personal writing, my round Australia trip and my career as an aviation journalist, magazine editor, customer engagement manager for AvPlan EFB and aircraft salesperson for Cirrus Sydney.

Aviation has changed my life: through learning to fly I have discovered a part of myself that is resilient, organised and capable of great joy as a result of hard work, setbacks and learning.

In the words of Socrates, “Man must rise above the Earth – to the top of the atmosphere and beyond – for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.”

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to email me with advice and suggestions on

Sunday, June 30, 2013

You are about to fall in love. You don’t
know it yet, but your life will never be the same.

In the next five years, you will cry more
tears, experience more joy and stretch yourself far, far beyond your wildest
imaginings. You will learn things about mechanics, physics and meteorology, the
very thought of which would frighten you now, sitting in a car in your heels
and your lipstick, blindly unaware of your upcoming surprise.

Your future lexicon will include words such
as ‘engine nacelle’ ‘viscosity’ and‘nimbostratus’. You will become fluent in ‘acronym’ and will not bat an
eyelid deciphering coded weather forecasts. You will learn to judge the weather
by the number of lines on a terminal forecast, and you will become tuned to
sense the change in pressure that determines whether you can fly or not. BOM
will replace Ebay as your homepage, and weather radar images will become as
familiar to you as the peppery palate of a fine Shiraz.

As you turn onto Birch Street and approach
the flying school, and you begin to understand the meaning of your surprise
birthday present, you feel a blend of fear and excitement churn in your belly.
This feeling, a pre-flight nervousness, will become your companion over the
next five years; you will learn to trust it, listen to it, and be in awe of the
fact that your body seems to know you’re going flying long before your brain
does.

When you meet the first of what will become
a very long line of instructors, you will, initially, be in awe. This smooth
and confident man will introduce you to your very first aircraft; a tiny toy-like
machine that you cannot believe you will ever fly. He will show you all the
components and you will instantly forget their names. He will strap you in and
make you believe you have control, but that he is always there, behind you,
really doing all the work. While it will most certainly be love at first flight
for you, sadly it will be a while before you find an instructor who makes you
feel this good.

This calm and capable man will allow you to
taxi the aircraft, and ask you to hold onto the throttle and yoke as you take
off. It will seem both surreal and perfectly right when you hurtle (as much as
a C150 can hurtle) down the runway and become airborne. Something inside you
moves, and you feel you were born purely for this moment; to fly, to soar, to
become the person you were in your childhood dreams.

The moment you are on the ground, you are
without a single doubt that you must learn to fly. You book a lesson the very
next weekend and begin your mountainous path towards your pilots licence.

I can tell you now, it will not be easy. I
would give anything to be able to meet you, Kreisha-of-the-past, and tell you
to breathe deeply, to look for a mentor, to join a flying club. I would
encourage you to pace yourself, take each hurdle one at a time, and meet other
students with whom you can share your experiences. If you are not happy at a
school, with an instructor, leave. There are plenty more birds in the sky.

Kreisha, 2008

Despite the mistakes (ahh, the time you
joined the circuit in the wrong direction; your prop strike; the occasion where
you forgot to untie the tail tie down and the many, many times you’ve sat under
the wing and sobbed) you have matured. You have achieved amazing things. I am
as proud of you as you will be of yourself (when you are me, in five years
time).

I have two final pieces of advice:

Your boundless optimism will see you
through the many times you feel the need to quit. The difference between a
dream and a goal is a date. Don’t give up.

And, in 2011, when that particularly
difficult instructor suggests you hold the stick like it’s a penis, open the
aircraft door and push him out!

Friday, June 21, 2013

In the last six months, I have flown on the wing of a vintage Stearman, traversed three states in a PC12, spun loops in a Pitts Special and hopped in and out of Bonanzas in the manner of a very happy aviation bunny. I've almost got to the point of thinking, "how can I top this?" after every single flight. As my av-demands get greater and greater with each experience, I wonder, each time, what great machine could possibly be next.

Imagine my delight, then, when I was approached by an old acquaintance from my student days, who told me he was now the proud owner of an Extra 330LX.

Extra 330LX (images, Will Spiers)

Graeme Sussmilch was finishing his instructor rating when we met at Curtis Aviation in 2009. Now he's the owner and operator of this magnificent machine, one of only two in the whole country. The 330LX will be the highest performance aircraft I've ever experienced. By far.

With a rate of climb of 3200 feet per minute and a cruise of 180 knots, it's as fast and bitey as it is beautiful. Graeme, a gentle mild-mannered person, seems an unlikely owner for such a Ferrari of the Skies - until you talk to him about his love of aerobatics.

"In March of 2000, I joined Japan Airlines, based in Honolulu, Hawaii," he tells me. "It is here I that I learnt to really enjoy flying aerobatics. On one of my days off, I went for a joy flight with Clint Churchill in his Extra 300L. At that point, I had only seen an Extra 300 in magazines. I still remember the first flight with Clint and the part that got me hooked on aerobatics. It was when he did a torque roll and while the Extra was hanging on its prop at full power, condensation was coming off the tips of the propeller and flowing backwards, this is when I knew I wanted to fly like this.

Graeme Sussmilch

I asked Clint if he would teach me to fly the way he flies, so on my days off from flying with Japan Airlines, I was learning to fly aerobatics."

As we walked around the beautifully polished aircraft, Graeme showed me the additional features he added to the Extra, including a splendid red paint job, and a balance ball in the passenger side.

"Clint taught me that this is the most important instrument in terms of passenger comfort," he explains. "Keep the ball in the middle, and you'll make the flight a lot more enjoyable for your passenger. In over a hundred hours in the Extra, I've never yet made a passenger ill"

Relieved to hear it, we finish the walk around, with Graeme explaining we will be wearing a parachute for this flight. Suddenly, I feel queasy; if bailing out of an airborne aircraft is a possibility, I find myself reluctant to go. I say as much, as calmly as I can, and Graeme reassures me it's merely a gimmick. As parachutes are required for aerobatics over 60 degrees angle of bank in the USA, Graeme feels the experience is more authentic for the passenger here, when they don the chute. He promises me we will not have to bail.

Reassured, we commence the complicated procedure of strapping in. I must say, the aircraft is totally pristine, and the seat reclines in the sportiest position I've ever seen; I really really feel as if I'm in a racing car. When I'm fully bonded to the aircraft, I actually feel as though I'm wearing it. Graeme flies from the back, and so I'm in the front, but unable to see over the canopy, which is a common feature in tailwheels (and a common occurrence for me anyway, being under-endowed in the height department).

As Graeme starts her up, she purrs into life and we begin the zig zag taxi that is characteristic of tailies. The Extra 330LX weighs only 645kg empty, but has a whopping 315hp. I don't have to have experienced it to know it will be a case of 'hold onto your headsets'.

And I'm not wrong. No sooner are we cleared for take off than we're vertical. By the time we turn crosswind, we're already at 3,000ft and Graeme hands her over to me. Generously. This is, without a doubt, the most responsive aircraft I've ever laid my hamfist hands on. I barely touch her and she climbs! She is begging to be spun, and Graeme takes over to show me what she can do. Sadly, I'm not fluent in aerobatic terminology, but I am certain we performed a Lazy 8, a barrel roll, a series of loops and an Immelmann. There were certainly some snap rolls (which I loved) and some inverted flight. All I can say was that each manoeuvre was smooth, and none were like the soggy cucumbers I used to fly when I was practising loops in the Citabria.

Next, we flew along the ravines, as Graeme demonstrated her turning capacity (sharp and fast) before heading back to the strip for some knife-edge passes for the photographer. Suddenly, every man and his headset decided to join the circuit, and the tower denied our request for the grass runway, where photographer Will Spiers was waiting with his giant lens. A Citation called inbound, and we were made to orbit until he landed, before joining for 10.

After seven passes, in a very busy traffic pattern, we decided to call it quits and come in to land (mostly because we were causing av-envy in the other pilots). Graeme's landing was so awesome, I applauded. It was a beautifully calm day, and his flying was so sleek, and his aircraft so magnificent, I could feel a day-long adrenaline high coming on.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Close your eyes
and think of Switzerland. What do yousee?
Mountains, chocolate, watches and, if you’re a pilot, Pilatus? And maybe a
Swiss bank account with your number on it…

Some don’t have to close their eyes to imagine a
Pilatus; PC12 owner Simon Hackett, for example, just has to open his hangar.
And last month, Mr Hackett generously opened his hangar doors for me!

Stereotypes abound
in the aviation industry – and as a female pilot and editor I’ve encountered
enough myself.When I heard the smooth
tones of Simon Hackett’s voice over the airwaves and was informed he was the
owner of a brand new PC12NG VH-TCP, I had begun to form some stereotypes of my
own. By the time he landed ahead of me at Cowra, his aircraft was swarming with
curious on-lookers, and I declined to join the throng, assuming the pilot an
arrogant millionaire keen to boast about his new shiny toy.

I’d seen on the
event schedule he would be giving a talk later that evening and curiosity (and
the fact there was a bar) inspired me to go along and listen.

It’s not often I
say this: I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Standing in front
of the screen, with a picture of a non-powered glider looming largely behind
him, was a man of average height, wearing a t-shirt with a caption that went
way over my head (likely pertaining to computer technology). With a beaming
grin, he began talking of his love of gliders, his eyes behind his spectacles glinting
with that look that any reader of an aviation magazine would recognise. His
presentation was so genuine, fascinating and funny, I approached him for an
interview the moment he closed his laptop. Generously, he agreed and we swapped
cards.

I noticed
something immediately about Mr Hackett: he is an excellent communicator. Before
the night was over, he had emailed me with a plan; a plan so generous you could
bundle it up and call it my birthday present. He suggested we fly from Adelaide
to Sydney in TCP and he would grant me the afternoon for an interview.

On the morning of
the flight, I am greeted by a casually dressed Simon. An unostentatious person,
I notice a distinct absence of a giant bling-bling pilot’s watch. As we stand
for a few minutes, in awe of the magnificent aircraft in front of us, I note
Simon’s excitement and delight in anticipation of the flight ahead.

Simon Hackett and a very exited me (photo Kylie Lovell)

With great pride,
Simon shows me the engine and checks the oil level, remarking on how typically
Swiss the organisation and cleanliness of the build layout is under the various
cowls. As we walk around the aircraft, we are dwarfed by TCP, her giant cargo
door open to demonstrate just how much she can carry. Simon has TCP configured
with six rear seats, four in a club seating arrangement and two aft, and -
demonstrating a practical rather than showy nature - has chosen sheepskin seat covers. To prevent me from
climbing in through the cargo door to get a better look, Simon directs me to
the ‘Hollywood’ style illuminated passenger entry stairs and invites me inside.

The interior is a
dream! I don’t know whether to be directed by my inner pilot and gawk at the
cockpit, or by my inner ego (where I am a famous writer and owner of TCP
myself) and gush over the walnut paneling, the interior lavatory and the
swivelly seats. To my delight, I discover I can do both: Simon has had the four
club seats fitted with Bose headsets, allowing the passengers to engage with
the flight deck.

As Simon is still
flying under supervision at this point, we also have on board PC-12 pilot/instructor
Stephen Bryne from Pegasus Aviation in Sydney. Both are happy to chat
throughout the flight.

Simon announces we
are to stop at Waikerie to pick up some friends from the gliding club (he is a
club member). Without a moment’s delay, we’re out of Adelaide airport, smoothly
slicing through the Adelaide sky. Since having flown the aircraft back from
Switzerland (see Simon’s blog at www.simonhackett.com), Simon has now logged
around 150 PC-12 hours.

We climb to FL120
briefly before commencing descent only a few minutes later into Waikerie. I
observe with interest the approach speed of 85 knots, which seems so unlikely
in such a large aircraft, as Simon lands her gently on only the first third of
the southern runway (the PC-12 requires a landing roll of under 600m). He
taxies up to greet what appears to be quite a crowd; by the time Simon has cut
the engines and opened the passenger stairs, the throng has grown to around
fifteen people; I get a taste of how it feels to be famous.

We’re here to pick
up Catherine Conway and John Viney, but as there’s a maintenance course for
gliders being held at Waikerie and the crowd would like to see the engine, ask
questions and be given a tour. Genuinely delighted, Simon answers their
questions and invites them inside. Half an hour later, we’re at FL290, belting
along at 260 knots, spotting distant jet aircraft by their contrails. It was,
without doubt, the smoothest and most luxurious flight of my life.

In just over two
hours, we are inbound for Bankstown, with Simon executing a greaser so fine it
elicits applause from the rear seats. It’s barely lunchtime when we settle down
in my office, munching on Vietnamese chicken rolls, as Simon proceeds to tell
me how he went from glider pilot to PC-12 owner in only two steps.

The story starts
in the early eighties with the very same Catherine we picked up at Waikerie.
They attended university in Adelaide at the same time, and Catherine (who had
just returned from a visit to the Adelaide University Gliding Club) encouraged
Simon to give gliding a go as well. It was love at first flight.

“Gliding is such a
beautiful, meditative thing,” says Simon. “Plus, it’s so inexpensive, compared
to powered flight, it’s an ideal path for a uni student who wants to learn to
fly.”

Simon worked his
way through the curriculum, gliding almost every weekend, learning as he went
the whims of the weather gods. “It certainly teaches you patience, to be at the
mercy of the weather. But more than that, gliding teaches you a skill set that
stands you in such great stead later on, as you progress to larger, more
powerful aircraft. The stick and rudder skills I have learnt as a glider pilot
have remained with me through everything else I’ve flown. All gliders are tail
draggers, and, in fact, I was surprised when I went over to GA, to discover
that tail dragging has its own endorsement – that was the only way I had ever
flown!”

After a few years
of gliding, Simon purchased a quarter share in VH-GQZ, a wooden single seat
glider called the Boomerang, built in Gawler in the 1960’s. “It was such a
beautiful aircraft. I loved that little Boomerang and flew it every two or
three weekends, and I wound up competing in gliding competitions with it as
well.”

By then, Simon had
graduated from Adelaide University and had been employed there as a System and
Network Administrator. He became a part of the national team that created
AARNET – The Australian Academic and Research Network – the precursor to the
commercial internet in Australia.

“I was heavily
into writing software and my focus was on writing software that made computers
control and move things in the real world,” explains Simon. “I wrote a program
that, with custom designed hardware, connected a toaster to the internet, with
the capacity to burn bread from the other side of the world.

“This was a
technology demonstration set up for a software company called TGV from the USA
who invited me along to a tradeshow in California to use the toaster as a
demonstration to draw people into their show stand! I went back the following
year, and they offered me a job, at three times the amount I was earning at the
uni. After some considerable thought, I turned them down. I had always wanted
to start my own company, and this was the ‘make or break point’. So TGV did a
lovely thing: they offered me the opportunity to become their software
distributor in Australia. They loaned me $25,000 and I started a little
company. I spent four years doing that, made around a quarter of a million
dollars selling their software, and then immediately re-invested it all to buy
the hardware I needed to become an Internet Service Provider.”

Throughout the
years of building up his company, Internode, Simon continued gliding. As the
company grew, he found himself with the means to buy a larger aircraft, this
time it was VH-FQW, a self-launching, cruising motor glider called a
MotorFalke.

“What I did with
the purchase of the MotorFalke was buy myself more independence. As I became
poorer on time, it was harder and harder to synchronise the times I could fly
with the times the gliding club was operating. I used the money to buy
flexibility. I have over 500 hours in the Falke and I attribute those hours
toward the preservation of my sanity in what became a very busy life.”

Simon subsequently
upgraded to a far more sophisticated and capable motor glider, the 50:1 Stemme
S10-VT (VH-SIO, an aircraft he still regularly flies). But by 2009 Simon felt
the need to move on to something a little faster.

To do so, he
needed a PPL, and he began the process in reverse order by purchasing the
aircraft first! Other students in that situation might purchase a 152 or little
Cherokee; not Simon, who opted for VH-YSH, a shiny new Cirrus SR22 GTS Turbo!

“It’s the modern geek boy’s dream aircraft –
glass cockpit and all the best modern technology – it goes fast, looks good,
and I ticked pretty much all the boxes on the order form,” enthuses Simon.

With a portion of
Simon’s gliding hours counting towards the VFR day syllabus requirements, it
only took him ten hours to earn a PPL.

“Those stick and
rudder skills attained in the gliders were easily applied to the Cirrus. The
main step up for me was getting in touch with the Garmin G1000. The Cirrus is a
much faster aircraft, so you have to keep your mind ahead of the machine at all
times. Once mastered, it is a joy to fly.”

“However, I
started to hit some limitations quite quickly: I became frustrated by being
restricted by the weather and saw I would need to step up to IFR; With four
children in our family, I became a little restricted by not being able to take
them all on a trip together. Also, you do have to bear in mind that when you do
tick all the boxes in outfitting your aircraft – air conditioning, anti icing
equipment, the weight penalty is substantial. You can really only carry one or
two passengers and full fuel with luggage. For me, with a large family, it was
just not large enough.”

Fortunately for
Simon, the year he felt he was outgrowing the Cirrus was also the year he sold
Internode to iiNet.

“By 2012, that
little company that I started with a loan of $25,000 was sold for $105 million,
with 450 staff and around 200,000 broadband customers. All of a sudden, I had a
lot more liquidity to work with. I had known Sebastian Lip at Pilatus for about
eight years and after a great deal of research, the PC-12 was already my
‘bucket list’ aircraft. Now I was in in the happy position where I could say to
him, “Ok, I’ll take it!”

TCP in the Pilatus hangar, Switzerland

TCP – which he
chose because it stands for Transmission Control Protocol (the ‘language’ behind
the operation of the Internet) - is fully equipped with almost every optional
extra Pilatus offers. As four and a half million dollar aircraft, in the same
price band as many start-up business jets, it’s very much at the upper end of
the cost spectrum for a single.

“It’s about your
mission,” he explains. “Yes, I could have bought a light biz jet, but my
mission matches the one mission the PC-12 was designed for – it is a high
performance SUV with wings and the best ‘high end’ bush-capable plane on the
planet.”

Sporting a much
larger cabin than your average biz jet, the PC-12 can carry a lot more – 1500Kg
of people and cargo.

“I can go absolutely anywhere in it, from
Sydney International to a 600m strip in the middle of nowhere. You can take it
camping and, unlike in a jet where you have to find a big bitumen strip and
then hire a car, with this plane you can land exactly where you want to be. The
mission profile for TCP is to be able to take my family to interesting places,
to do business where ever I want, and to charter it out when I’m not using it
so that it can earn its keep.

“It’s extremely
safe; the single engine means its cheaper to run, and as I’m used to flying
aircraft with zero engines, flying one with only one is not a particular
concern for me. It’s a 16:1 glider with the engine off, which is surprisingly
good for an aircraft not intended for that role – and a sign of excellent
aerodynamic design. I have the embedded appreciation, as a glider pilot, that
it’s not the engine that keeps you in the air – it’s the wings! Carrying that
knowledge with me is what’s let me step up so quickly.”

Having placed an
order with Pilatus, immediately set about learning to fly a PC-12.

“I spent a week at
ground school, which is very much a systems training exercise: it’s not about
learning how to fly, it’s about learning about what this thing you’ve just
climbed into contains – hydraulic systems, electrical systems, avionics,
navigation systems, de-icing systems – and how to operate these systems. For me,
it was also the first time I’d ever flown a turbine engine. In Australia there
is a specific PC-12 type rating (in the US there isn’t, and at 4740 kg MTOW it
is still a ‘light’ aircraft – if only just!). Somewhat untypically for a PC-12
pilot, I was not already instrument rated.

“In addition, for
me this was my first experience at flying a pressurized, retractable, turbine
aircraft, as well as my first experience flying under IFR conditions – all at
once!

When I mention to
Simon that I was once advised by a wise old pilot, “Buy an aircraft you will
grow into, not out of,” he nods vigorously, and says, “It took me most of 100
hours to get completely comfortable flying the aircraft through the full flight
sequence with full IFR procedures. The insurance policy specifies a minimum of
100 hours turbine experience - and I can see why.”

“Is there anything
you’d add to the PC-12, anything you feel Pilatus has overlooked?” I ask Simon
as we prepare to leave for the train station.

“Very little.
Being in the IT industry, I did add a few bits of electronics – a four-place
intercom in the cabin and some USB charger outlets to compliment the existing
110V AC cabin system. But really, it’s the perfect aircraft for my needs: its
short field capability, given its size, is second to no other. It really is my
dream aircraft. There’s only one other aircraft I have on the radar – and it’s
not yet certified.

Of course, Simon
is talking about the PC-24 – Pilatus’ recently announced twin jet, claimed to
be a jet version of the PC-12 with similar short and unimproved field
capabilities.

“It will be the
ultimate upgrade! Imagine the RFDS being able to medevac at over 400 knots out
of a rough bush strip!” gushes Simon.

With that amazing
thought hanging in the air, we board the train to Central. As we part, he
offers aspiring PC-12 owners some advice,

“Find something
you have an aptitude for, and that you really enjoy. If you’re fortunate that
its something other people are prepared to pay for, and if you are mad enough,
you might decide to start a business doing it,” suggests Simon. “These things
don’t always work out – but the things that don’t work out perfectly are the
things that we truly learn from. Understand the risks and then take the
plunge!”

Only able to
dream, I close my eyes and think of Switzerland…

Thanks to Simon Hackett, Stephen
Byrne and Sebastian Lip for their assistance in writing this piece and Scott
Ballantyne for his help with the headline.